Political outlook comprising a belief in the efficacy of market forces, the need for strong central government, and a conviction that self-help is preferable to reliance on the state, combined with a strong element of nationalism.

The ideology is associated with the former UK premier Margaret Thatcher, but stems from an individualist view found in Britain's 19th-century Liberal and 20th-century Conservativeparties, and is no longer confined to Britain.

Elements of Thatcherism, particularly the emphasis on controlling public expenditure and promoting opportunities for personal achievement, have been incorporated into the policy approach of the New Labour; government of Tony Blair, from 1997.

Thatcher did not originate these ideas, and nor was she the first British politician to put them forward.

Thatcher defeated the long miners’ strike of 1984-85 and, in successive Acts of Parliament, curbed the power of the unions.

If the latter, Thatcherism may be considered little more than the bombastic style of one remarkable but deluded woman and a concoction got up by the media to help sell tabloid newspapers, the political equivalent of a page three nude.

Politically, Mrs Thatcher faced criticism from the so-called "wets" in her party, leading to her famous "not for turning" comment at the ConservativeParty Conference.

She was succeeded by John Major, whose approach was more conciliatory, looking for a nation more at ease with itself as he put it—and who won the 1992 election very much against the odds, before 18 years of Conservative rule came to an end in 1997 with the landslide victory for new Labour.

In some areas, Mrs Thatcher’s Government was spectacularly successful in reducing public spending: on housing, thanks to the sell-off of council houses; on industrial support, thanks to the privatisation of loss-making nationalised industries.

The Thatcher Experiment Thatcher overturned the conventions of her day, namely that in order to lead, a party must position itself at or close to the centre, that in a period of high unemployment no government could expect to be re-elected and that co-operation with the majority economic interests is inevitable.

Thatcherism There are three contexts in which Thatcherism is considered, namely leadership style, the strong state free economy and the international reaction to prevailing problems which went beyond Britain.

Thatcher stuck to her fundamental beliefs in a way that most politicians do not, remaining consistent across all her speeches and throughout her career.

Like Reagan and Thatcher, we must have the self-confidence to dismiss the left’s claims to have history on its side, and we must have the courage to tackle the challenges that seem so intractable that most politicians shrink from even thinking about them.

So whereas Thatcher and Reagan used to look to economists as their gurus, their successors will be calling on social scientists to provide their intellectual firepower and their policy ideas.

So Thatcherism does have a future if conservatives are prepared to show that lady’s courage, to revive her principles, and to apply them with her conviction.

It is this underlying consensus which Thatcherism is dismantling in practice and rubbishing in principle.

This longer-term and deeper reshaping of the cultural and moral life of the nation is really what gives Thatcherism its cutting edge and makes it a 'hegemonic' force in politics: a force which means not simply to win electoral power in the system, but to realign the whole of society with its project.

The problem with Thatcherism is not its commitment to change but rather the nature of the changes which it has set in motion.

When Bruce Gyngell arrived on the scene, he took the station upmarket slightly, jettisoning the baggage of his predecessor — ironically, the now-Director General of the BBC, Greg Dyke.

The woman was Mrs Thatcher, the British Prime Minister, and she was TV-am’s greatest supporter.

The much remarked-upon irony, that it was she who caused the station’s demise, is now a cliché that broadcasting historians have been commenting on since the fateful day that the new regulator’s fax arrived at Camden Lock, and will continue to do so for many more years.

The British Labor Party Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain invited Margaret Thatcher, the onetime rival of his Labor Party, to tea at 10 Downing Street; then he went out and hired Saatchi and Saatchi, the advertising agency that helped bring Mrs.

Thatcher (a Torie) to power nearly three decades ago, to handle its advertising in the next election campaign.

Since then, the firm has been purchased by Publicis and the Saatchis were disbanned in 1994 to MandC Saatchi.

Long Ashton Research Station near Bristol, where I took my Ph.D in the 1970's.

When Thatcherism forced the closure of the Research Station's cider research programme after 83 glorious years, I moved with my family to South Oxfordshire and was lucky enough to be able to plant a small cider orchard of my own.

It's not very big - just 33 trees of 11 different 'vintage' varieties on dwarf rootstocks which produce just a few hundred litres a year.

www.cider.org.uk /homepage.htm (153 words)

Thatcherism is Dead. Long Live Thatcherism!(Site not responding. Last check: )

Indeed, so comprehensive was the victory of New Labour that the pundits felt emboldened to talk about the death of the Tories and the prospect of the U.K. being ruled by a left-of-centre coalition for decades to come.

The intention, as with education, is to decentralise the NHS, expand private involvement in both the managing and financing of the NHS and to try to create a market in which doctors and nurses control their own expenditure.

On the contrary, this was a radicalism that she could only dream about and she was always keen to reassure those who thought she had advanced too far with one of her favourite sayings of those days - "the NHS is safe with us".

When Baroness Thatcher came to power, Britain was recovering from an era when the IMF paid its bills and strikes crippled the country.

This is clearly a history-shaping moment." He talks about Thatcher and Reagan being "two of the most influential figures of the 20th century"; when she appeared at his funeral in June, it was as if she were the surviving partner of a political marriage.

The irony is that, in Britain, Thatcherism has scant chance of revival - when the Conservatives had pledged to outspend Labour on health and education and Letwin is taking months to summon the courage to pledge a hard tax cut.

The ConservativeParty is presently tearing itself apart because its leadership is trying to abandon two of the central principles of Thatcherism, the belief that public spending should be reduced and that privatisation and markets are intrinisically superior to public provision.

By no means all of this was due to Margaret Thatcher - there were powerful social and economic forces at work in the 1980s and early 90s to which governments throughout the world, of right as well as left, had to respond.

She massively increased it, leaving at the end of the Conservative tenure one in three children living in households with less than half the average income (the official definition of poverty).

these are as central to Thatcherism's hegemonic project as the privatisation programme of the assault on local democracy."[7] This ideology was to a large extent based around attempting to re-establish a halcyon national past in which the problems and divisions inherent in contemporary Britain were effectively obfuscated.

Thatcher'sspeeches on the victory in the Falklands are indicative of the use and abuse of history by her government and deserve to be quoted at length:

Thatcher manages to place this insignificant event within a tradition of national power and pride that includes Waterloo, Trafalgar, and the Battle of Britain and, more importantly, to utilise this symbolic power to strengthen domestic support that resulted in a sweeping Conservative victory in the 1983 elections.

Thatcherism Assess the impact of Thatcherism on the ConservativeParty's approach to Politics since 1975 When Thatcher became leader of the ConservativeParty in February 1975, she began to air her new radical policies.

Thatcher's ideas were revolutionary and have had a considerable impact on Conservatism.